US-China Climate Accord Gives Hope for Global Agreement

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The United States and China surprised climate-policy watchers
this week by announcing a rare accord to cut carbon pollution. As
details of the agreement are released, experts are hopeful that
cooperation between the world's two biggest economies, and two
biggest carbon emitters, bodes well for an as-yet elusive global
climate pact.

"For many years, the reluctance of the U.S. and China to make
strong commitments has been an oft-used
excuse by other countries to not take action," said Anthony
Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change
Communication.

"In fact, many in the U.S. Congress have resisted taking action
because they argued that China wasn't acting," Leiserowitz told
Live Science in an email. "And many Chinese leaders have long
used the same argument about the United States to avoid making
their own commitments. This very public and early agreement by
the two largest national emitters in the world should help break
the long-standing logjam in the international negotiations."
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On the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)
meeting in Beijing, U.S. President Barack Obama and
Chinese President Xi Jinping announced their goals to cut
emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main culprit behind
human-caused global warming.

For its part of the deal, the United States pledged to cut its
emissions by 26 to 28 percent below the 2005 level by 2025.
(Obama had already set a target to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions to 17 percent below 2005 levels
by the year 2020.)

"This is an ambitious goal, but this is an achievable goal,"
Obama said.

China, meanwhile, for the first time, agreed to hit its peak
carbon-dioxide emissions around 2030. The nation also aims to
have nonfossil fuels make up 20 percent of its primary energy
consumption by 2030. Effectively, this means that over the next
16 years, China will have to deploy an additional 800 to 1,000
gigawatts of power from nuclear, wind, solar and other zero-emission
energy sources. That's close to the total current electricity
capacity in the United States, according to the White House.

"There's a real energy in the air around here about this
breakthrough," said Keith Gaby, director of communications at the
U.S.-based Environmental Defense Fund. "We think it's hugely
significant."

Last month, the European Union set its own goal to stop the
increase of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and reduce them by
at least half of 1990 levels by the middle of this century. Gaby
said it's important that the world's three biggest economic blocs
are now moving in the same direction on climate change.
And he was optimistic that the agreement would add diplomatic
momentum to talks leading up to next year's United Nations
Climate Change Conference in Paris. [ In
Photos: World's Most Polluted Places]

During the 2015 climate conference, members of the United Nations
are expected to hash out a more thorough, legally binding global
agreement to curb the damaging
effects of climate change. Most countries are expected to
announce their intended carbon-cutting pledges in the first
quarter of 2015.

Yet, the announcement didn't draw cheers from all sides. U.S.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from
Kentucky who is likely to become the majority leader come
January, told reporters Wednesday (Nov. 12): "I was particularly
distressed by the deal that [Obama] has apparently reached with
the Chinese on his current trip, which, as I read the agreement,
requires the Chinese to do nothing at all for 16 years, while
these carbon emissions regulations are creating havoc in my state
and other states around the country."

But McConnell's interpretation ignores the serious changes China
will have to make if it wants to meet its goal by 2030.

"It's not as if China can flick a switch in 2030 and suddenly
peak its emissions," said Elliot Diringer, climate policy analyst
and executive vice president of the Center for Climate and Energy
Solutions. "It's like turning a supertanker. You need to get a
big head start."

Nonetheless, several uncertainties still loom. Elizabeth Economy,
director for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign
Relations, noted that there are questions about how Chinese
officials will collect their data and prove they're meeting
international standards.

"There's a lot to be done at a granular level to ensure that
China's able to meet its pledge," Economy said, but she added,
"It is important that they've set this out publicly."

It's also not clear what China's level of CO2 emissions will be
when its peak occurs, Economy said. Lynn Price, leader of
the China Energy Group at Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory in California, agreed that this an "important
consideration." If current trends continue, China could hit
a peak of 12 to 15 gigatons of CO2 between 2038 and 2040, but in
a more ambitious scenario, China may peak at 10 to 11 gigatons of
CO2 between 2025 and 2030, Price explained in
a statement.

"When we compare China's 2030 target to the results of a number
of recent or ongoing studies of China's energy and emissions
pathways to 2050, this appears to be a relatively ambitious date
to achieve a CO2 emissions peak and implies a meaningful effort
beyond business-as-usual," Price added.

The United States, too, will need to move beyond
business-as-usual policies to drastically cut carbon emissions,
even though the White House said its target is "achievable under
existing law."

"The U.S. target presumes policies that are not yet in place,"
Diringer told Live Science. For example, the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) unveiled a proposal in June to
cut carbon emissions from U.S. power plants by 30
percent from 2005 levels over the next 25 years, but that plan is
still pending approval. The rule will likely face resistance from
opponents of emissions regulation in the courts and in Congress,
Diringer said.

Already, Senate Republicans are looking at passing measures that
would prohibit federal authorities from enforcing the EPA
emissions rule or give states the option of not complying with it
until litigation is resolved,
The Washington Post reported.